Alexander’s Turn

Publishing Date : 25 December, 2017

Benson C SailiTHIS EARTH, MY BROTHER

World conqueror seeks immortality ala Gilgamesh but only to die at age 33

Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) is almost unanimously acknowledged as history’s greatest military general. Having succeeded to the throne of the Greek Kingdom of Macedonia on the demise of his father King Phillip II in 336 BC, he went on to conquer the whole of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East – all lands that were deemed the hub of the mainstream world at the time. What is even more remarkable is that he accomplished these feats at the tender age of only 33!

There are two aspects to the breathtaking saga of Alexander. There is the aspect that historians treat as viable history. Then there is the aspect they dismiss as pure myth or fantastical embellishment. This you will never find in the pages of one, single institutional textbook. Why? Because it talks about gods, angels, paradise, oracular visits, etc, which your modern historian simply would not reconcile with his myopic, single-track view of literal history.

To your university educated historian, gods, angels and paradise have supernatural connotations and therefore would not be part and parcel of this temporal world. How ignorant! For the gods and angels even of the Bible were not ethereal beings, now we know courtesy of the Sumerian tablets: they were flesh-and-blood beings like you and I. Clearly therefore, the gods and angels who feature in the Alexander story were not metaphysical beings: they were Anunnaki, finish and klaar.

What do we learn from the Sumerian chronicles in relation to the character and morality of the gods, as the Anunnaki were called? A typical blot about them was that they were unashamedly promiscuous – on the basis of our concept of morality as mankind, that is. For example, they fathered children with human queens or such members of the nobility behind the back of the king or some such aristocratic spouse, perhaps not so much for simple lust as for politically strategic purposes.

A case in point is Enki’s fathering of Noah by Lamech’s wife Batanash. As a result, even during the era of the pharaohs, a number of them claimed they were demigods because they were surreptitiously fathered by gods. It turns out that in the case of Alexander too, King Phillip was his father in name only. His real father was a god, an Anunnaki.

GREEK GOD ZEUS WAS NANNAR-SIN

Let us first of all demonstrate that the Greek gods and the Old Testament gods were one and the same but known by different names. In fact, the names were not different as such: they were simply linguistic variations of the same name. But the bottom line is that both the Greek and Old Testament gods were Anunnaki.

The Greeks did not believe in only one god. In fact, no ancient civilisations worshipped or revered one god. Even the Old Testament gods, it is now common knowledge, were disparate entities merged into the compound term Jehovah: that we have demonstrated in our earlier articles. Even our primordial ancestors as Africans invoked not Modimo (Setswana for God) but Badimo (the living dead as a collective). The unitarisation of Badimo into Modimo is a recent fad.

The Greeks had a pantheon of twelve gods they called Olympians. At the head of these gods was Zeus. Who was Zeus? He was said to be the “King of the Gods”. In Sumerian records, the King of the Gods was Anu, “Our Father Who Art In Heaven”, the ruler of the planet Nibiru. But in Greek theology, Anu was known as Uranus and he was said to be the father of Kronos, who in turn was the father of Zeus. Kronus thus was the equivalent of Enlil in the Anunnaki pantheon. What that entails is that Zeus was the king of gods who were based on Earth, not the cosmic king of the gods like Uranus was. However, in the Anunnaki pantheon, the king of gods on Earth was Enlil, or Kronus in Greek theology, not Zeus. So, who was the real ruler of Earth: Zeus or Enlil?

If you have been reading the Earth Chronicles, you will have noted that as the BC era wound down, Enlil, who was Earth’s initial Chief Executive, began to retreat from centre stage and delegated his duties mainly to Nannar-Sin, his second-born son. Thus to the Enlilites or people who worshipped Enlilite gods, Nannar-Sin was the de facto King of the Gods. So was Nannar-Sin equivalent to the Greek’s Zeus?

Literally, the term Zeus, in its original rendering, meant “He Who Is Here”. When addressed to a god, it meant “The One (a title for a divine being) Who Rules Here on Earth”. In short, this is “Earth Lord”, “Ruler of the World”, or “God of Earth”. The biblical term Jehovah is best explained in some African languages, one of which is setswana. In setswana, it is “Ye-o-fa”, meaning “The One Who is Here”. Thus Jehovah and Zeus meant the same thing – the divine ruler of Earth.

Now, Greek theology tells us Zeus had scores of children but the most significant were the twins Apollo and Artemis, a boy and girl. In the Sumerian accounts, these, as we have explained, are Utu-Shamash and Inanna-Ishtar, the children of Nannar-Sin. The Sumerian chronicles also tell us that Nannar-Sin had upwards of 70 children, the reason he was also known as Aten or Adonai in the Bible, both of which meaning “The Fertile One” in a reproductive sense. Zeus, it emerges, was Nannar-Sin. But was it Nannar-Sin who was the real father of Alexander the Great? Certainly Not. Alexander’s real father was Marduk, the son of the great god Enki.

A GOD IN DISGUISE COMES TO TOWN

One day before Alexander was born, an impressive-looking personage called at the courts of King Phillip with an entourage that was of kingly proportions. This dignitary identified himself as Nectanebo II Pharaoh of Egypt. Nectanebo II ruled Egypt from 360-342 BC. Those days, there were no pictures, no phones, and no telex, fax, or email and so it was easy for somebody to present themselves as somebody else, which this dignitary actually did. For he was not Nectanebo but the god Ammon. Ammon was the name by which Egyptians called Marduk.

Marduk’s intention was not simply to pay a courtesy call on Phillip. He wanted to plant his own seed in the very bosom of the Greek monarchy. At the time, that is, during the astrological age of Aries (2220 to 60 BC), Marduk was the Enlil, Earth’s Chief Executive (how that came to be we will dwell upon in future articles) and so was a very powerful figure. Marduk had calculated that the Greek empire was going to emerge as the mightiest on the globe and so he wanted Phillip’s heir to carry his genes. At least in this one regard, he tore a page from his father Enki’s amatory manual. Thus it was that as guest of Phillip, Marduk seduced his queen Olympias and the rest as they say is history: Alexander came to be.

When Alexander was born, Phillip was shocked at the “godly” features of his son, just like Lamech was startled by the Anunnaki-like features of the newly-born Noah. He launched into an investigation straightway and learnt that the man who had visited his palace was actually not Pharaoh Nectanebo II but the god Marduk in disguise. He now understood why Alexander looked the way he did. Since Marduk was the overall Lord of Earth, there was nothing Phillip could do about his bastard son other than to recognise him as his own.

Phillip, however, did not take the matter lying down. He kept accusing his wife of adultery and in fact went on to marry a second wife, the daughter of a Macedonian nobleman. Thus Alexander grew up aware of the scandalous circumstances of his birth. It is probable that King Phillip did make intimations of an intention to disinherit him for his assassination in 336 BC by one of his bodyguards remains a mystery. It need not be: Alexander and his mother Olympias obviously had a hand in it. Phillip was killed just after welcoming a new son with his second wife – a future threat to Alexander’s prospects of ascending to the throne.

GO TO EGYPT, DELPHIC ORACLE URGES ALEXANDER

The first thing Alexander sought to do when he succeeded to the throne was to clear genetic uncertainties about himself. Was he indeed the son of a god or that was no more than idle rumour? It is probable that his mother did own up to him as to who his real father was but he wanted hard facts. And if he was indeed the son of a god, then he would seek that god and ask to be conferred immortality. Alexander’s teacher was Aristotle and Aristotle had related to him The Epic of Gilgamesh, which served to spur his own quest.

In order to get a definite answer to his own conundrum, Alexander journeyed to Delphi on Mt. Parnassus near the Gulf of Corinth. Delphi was a religious sanctuary, a temple, where important people went to consult the god Apollo (Utu-Shamash) through a priestess known as the Sibyl. When the Sybyl spoke, she first broke to Alexander the most unsavoury piece of news – that he would be a great man but he was not favoured with length of years: he’d die at a very young age. That really jolted the young king, who was only 20 at the time.

Then Alexander asked her whether he was the son of a god as it was rumoured in the palace precincts. The Sybil knew the answer to that question but she equivocated: she was the priestess not of Marduk but of Utu-Shamash and so she didn’t wish to embroil herself in matters relating to Marduk. So she told him that if he wanted the answer to that question, he should travel to the Oasis of Siwa in Egypt, about 300 miles west of the Nile and engage with the priests there. In Egypt, Marduk was the main god, whereas in Europe it was mainly Nannar-Sin and Utu-Shamash.

ALEXANDER ROUTS THE PERSIANS

With the knowledge that his would be a short life, Alexander was not deflated as such: instead, he made it a point that he was going to dedicate a lot of effort to seeking the Elixir of Life. He also undertook to attain great military accomplishments before he died. With this volition, he devoted himself to forging a mighty military machine with which to conquer the whole wide world. In the process, he spent more time with his forces than at the reins.

In the next two years, he united the various Greek states, who had been feuding with each other, under the banner of his own city-state, Macedonia. He trained them thoroughly and rigorously and in 334 BC, they were ready to take on the then superpower of the day, the Persians, who in the past had made repeated inroads into Greek territories and often had the edge. The immediate prizes to be gained were Asia Minor and the lucrative sea lanes in the eastern Mediterranean, both of which were under the Persian sphere of influence. Alexander was at the head of 15,000 elite foot and horse-mounted soldiers.

It was Europe’s first armed invasion of Asia. In the initial battle, the Persians, like the Greeks’ a confederate army led by Darius III, were repulsed as far as today’s Turkish-Syrian border. Then in the autumn of 333 BC, the Persians regrouped and launched a counterattack in what became known as the Battle of Issus. The counter-offensive backfired: Alexander captured the royal tent but Darius himself slipped through his fingers and retreated to Babylon, the then capital of the Persian Empire, which stretched all the way from Asia Minor, now seized by Alexander, to India.

Had Alexander pressed on and chased after the remnants of the Persian army and their now unnerved king, it would have been all over since the great Greek general had thrown quite a scare into them. But Alexander called a halt to the advance and ordered his troops to head south. The destination was Egypt. His generals were astounded, but what they didn’t know was that Alexander was pursuing two purposes at once – the conquest of the world and the quest for the Plant of Eternal Youth with a view to prolonging his life and therefore nullifying the prophecy of the Delphic oracle.

ALEXANDER CONFIRMED AS MARDUK’S SON

Arriving in Egypt in 332 BC, Alexander expected the Persian viceroys who ruled Egypt to fight to the death but that was not to be: instead, the Persian garrison downed arms and euphorically welcomed him as their new King. Alexander then embarked on a three-week desert trek to the Oasis of Siwa, the seat of a renowned oracle of Marduk, in heed of the Delphic oracle’s ordinance. The priests of Siwa indeed assured him that he was the son of Marduk, or Ammon as he was known in Egypt.

When Alexander broke these good tidings to the Egyptians, he was crowned as their Divine Pharaoh in a temple in Thebes. To mark this occasion and to celebrate his now borne-out demigod status, Alexander issued new silver coins depicting him with a ram’s horns. He henceforth became known in Egypt as the Lord of the Two Horns. The ram horns were in deference to Marduk, who was known as the Ram-God in that he presided over Aries, the astrological age of the Ram.

Having been confirmed as a demigod, Alexander now regarded his quest for immortality as a right and not simply a privilege. Once again, he had asked the priests of Siwa as to how he could get access to what he called the “Waters of Life”. The priests, who respected him but were not in awe of him, simply told him that he should first go to Karnak and from there proceed to a “land south of Egypt” (today’s Sudan) and there meet Queen Candace for further instructions.

According to Zechariah Sitchin, the significance of Karnak arose from the fact that it was “a venerated religious centre since the third millennium BC. Karnak was a conglomeration of temples, shrines and monuments to Ammon built by generations of Pharaohs. One of the most impressive and colossal structures was the temple built by Queen Hatshepsut more than a thousand years before Alexander's time. And she too was said to have been a daughter of the god Ammon, conceived by a queen whom the god had visited in disguise!”

ALEXANDER MEETS ENOCH AND ELIJAH BUT DRAWS A BLANK

Queen Candace has been described as one "whose beauty no living man could praise sufficiently”. But it was not her beauty Alexander was after: it was the secret of immortality. It is not clear in the Alexander chronicles whether she too had sought the Fountain of Youth, but she did have an idea as to where it could be found and accordingly gave Alexander the directions and protocols of approach to the place she described as a "the wonderful cave where the gods congregate." He was instructed to “to seek out a certain mountain with subterranean passageways in the Sinai Peninsula for angelic encounters”, an echo of the route Gilgamesh took 2500 years before.

Following the directions given him, Alexander and a few of his trusted companions reached Mt Mashu in the Sinai Peninsula and there he was met by “winged men”, that is, Anunnaki astronauts who were manning a gate. Apparently, they were content with his bonafides for they gave him the green light. Like Gilgamesh, he travelled in a dark subterranean tunnel for 12 days and nights, whereupon he met an “angel” who had a flaming fire in a place with a star-lit haze and shining rooftops. The angels or gods, who had eyes that emitted beams of light, were being served by solemn and silent humans. Alexander himself described the place as “where Paradise, which is the Land of the Living, is situated, the abode where the saints dwell."

The angel asked him, “Who art thou, and for what reason art thou here, O mortal?” Alexander identified himself and answered that he had come in search of the Waters of Life so that he might drink of them and evade his fate, having been told by the oracle of Delphi that he had but a short time to live. The angel’s response was blunt and rather disquieting. He said, “"You shall live upon dying, thus not dying.” In other words, there would be no immortality for him: only eternal post-mortem life as was the destiny of every mortal.

Alexander nonetheless insisted that he wanted to know more about the secrets of Heaven. The Angel then took him to another section of Paradise, where he found two men whose faces “were bright, their teeth whiter than milk. Their eyes shone brighter than the morning star; they were lofty of stature, of gracious look." One of the two, who lay in a couch, “was draped in a coverlet inlaid with gold and precious stones, and above it, worked in gold, were branches of a vine, having its cluster of grapes formed of jewels.” The two men are named as Enoch and Elijah, of whom even the Bible makes a point of informing us that they never died but went straight to “Heaven”.

The two saints told Alexander that God had “hidden us from death” in this place, “the City of the Storehouse of Life from where the Bright Waters of Life emanate”. On his part, Enoch, who was the senior of the two, re-affirmed what the angel had told him and proceeded to serve the warning that, “Do not pry into the mysteries of God: be content with your lot.”

Alexander left Paradise a downcast man. He now set his sights on meeting Marduk in person so that he pleads his case with “my father”. Sadly, by the time Alexander conquered Babylon and met Marduk, the god was dead. And in the case of Alexander himself, the priestess of Delphi’s prophecy was fulfilled: he died, following a short illness, on June 11, 323 BC, at the tender age of 33. As with Gilgamesh before him, the Plant of Rejuvenation completely eluded him.